November verse 14:

Just squeezing in my last November poem before December is upon us, I’m starting from a paraphrase of the opening sentences of Edward Said’s On Late Style, which I’m reading for the Book Group. Here’s how Said’s posthumously finished book begins:

The relationship between bodily condition and aesthetic style seems at first to be a subject so irrelevant and perhaps even trivial by comparison with the momentousness of life, morality, medical science, and health, as to be quickly dismissed.

That gives you a taste. The New York Times website gives the whole first chapter, here, if you’re interested to read on. My little verse deals only with the first paragraph, and isn’t exactly a paraphrase of that.

November verse 14: Why the relationship betweenbodily condition and aesthetic style is not atrivial subjectYou say: 'So trivial a subject,the body and aesthetic style'srelationship! Why not reflecton what's important in your files,like life, and health, and science and moralsor medicine or the death of corals?'I say: Of all of us it's truebecause we're conscious, me and you,we're constantly involved in makingsomething of our little lives, and this self-making builds archives,a base of the great undertaking,history, which sages tell,at heart is made by human toil.

I don’t know yet where Said’s argument goes from there, and I apologise in advance for not trying to produce a verse version of the whole book.

2 responses to “November verse 14:”

J: I get the idea that you have some special insight into exactly what I am at this moment engaged in doing – at this very moment in at least 30 piles – family history files lie in line across our sun-room floor – those archives suggesting my own little life is somehow the grander for all those links. Bravo at the completion of your own self-imposed November challenge. (Still November in Queensland as I reply!) Were all these piles of files piled high – one atop the other – my height!

The play is bonkers, but in a good way. Pamela Rabe, Colin Friels and Toby Schmidt are all brilliant. The set (by genius Brian Thomson), lighting design (Matthew Scott), and sound design (Paul Charlier) all remarkable. What Are we to make of the moment when Toby Schmidt's character pulls off his false moustache? Photo by Daniel Boud from Belvoir site.

We found this pleasant surprise on Netflix. It's an Australian sitcom about panicky young women, a little in the manner of Offspring, The Letdown or that one where every man the woman had sex with died. Here. a Nobel laureate admits that he has donated his own sperm to many cases of in vitro fertilisation, and as a result his adult daughter discovers sh […]